Public defender open for business

Chief Public Defender Alex Bunin said his newly created office began taking its first mental health cases in mid-January and started work on a handful of appellate cases soon thereafter. Bunin said the office currently has about 20 cases.

It is the first time in the 174-year history of Harris County courts that indigent defendants have been assigned defense attorneys attached to an independent, government-run office. As the office grows, it will take on more cases, but so far it is not envisioned that it will completely replace the practice of judges appointing defense attorneys to the indigent defendants who appear in their courtrooms.

The public defender office will have 22 employees in its temporary headquarters by the end of the month, Bunin said. Once the office moves into its permanent shop in the criminal courthouse this summer, it will staff up to 68 people, most of them attorneys, and will start taking felony trial and juvenile cases.

The state Task Force on Indigent Defense is covering the office’s entire $4.1 million budget for the year that ends on Sept. 30. The Task Force intends to fund 80 percent of the Harris County public defender office budget in the year starting Oct. 1, but that is contingent upon details of the state budget.